firedragon.8953

My advice for most casual players is not to worry about ascended unless they are trying to do high tier fractals. If you want to do high tier fractals, I suggest using wizards vault, strike missions, and raids. All give easy access to stat selectable non-crafted ascended gear while only needing a good exotic set to complete. Of course you can also craft them, and once you're used to crafting and collecting the right mats, they're actually not difficult at all. But, after you get one character decked out in ascended gear to work on T4 fractals, just do T4 fractals. Personally, I got most of my ascended gear through raids, either drops or using the raid currency to buy it. I know raiding isn't for everyone, but after doing it I never had to worry about ascended again (and also got legendary armor to boot). If you don't want to do high tier fractals or lots of WvW, honestly, I'd just forget about ascended gear, except for trinkets (which are easy with laurel vendors and Living World S3 currencies).

Easy peasy. Playing pretty casual the past year or so, normally just 2-4 hours a week, it'll take me a total of about 4 months to finish a set. About half way done now, and already completed all the metas for the currencies. I'm used to the HoT provisioner token grind from doing raid armor way back when. Plus I've been regularly picking up the 1 for an obsidian shard in the Black Citadel for almost 2 years, which basically covered everything after a few cheap weapon crafts to trade in HoT maps. Definitely less effort needed than running weekly raids and seemed faster than PvP and I'm assuming WvW armor.

It will be the T1 skins. It will require more kryptis essence. It will be the base skin, but reskinned with the kryptis texture. Also, lol.

Only thing to reasonably pay Lyhr for is the final craft. 60 extra ectos for a whole set isn't bad if you have said set's weight crafting profession under level 100 or whatever, but have at least one of the other weight crafting professions maxed to craft other needed components. Honestly, I don't know why anet put free mystic forge recipes into the items that Lyhr can "help" you with. That's pretty much just a troll move on their part.

I like this idea. Maybe they can add the "super chest" in the fortress (assuming that's where we're going next). I'm kinda torn about this kind of design. This is also what Drizzlewood essentially did. Problem is, to complete the whole meta is long and requires a lot of sitdown time. Honestly, I prefer to start the meta whenever you want design that is currently in Inner Nayos, rather than a fixed timer (Skywatch, Amyntas, etc.). Inner Nayos reminds me a bit of how local area core map metas would happen, and it's kind of refreshing since the devs have seemed to heavily favor the "world boss" timed meta event design in recent expansions. This makes it so that multiple maps may be doing multiple parts of the meta and so as a player you can just choose which meta event you want to do. With the above suggestion of "key pieces" it also makes it so people can choose to do meta A, B, or C at their leisure, but are encouraged to participate in them all to build the final key for the bonus loot chest. Resembling something close to Grothmar Valley's meta event and the keys to open the Vault of the Khan-Ur.

That's an interesting example, but I don't think it's a good parallel to what the OP is feeling. The Jaguar 2 is a new successor to replace the old. We have no idea if GW3 is that, just mere speculation. It may reduce the amount of new players willing to start GW2 now because they may think they should just wait for GW3, but even that...is really jumping the gun. I think a more comparable situation to what the OP is feeling is that of a stamp collector. Now, would a stamp collector decide to stop collecting stamps because he's afraid one day his house may burn down and take his collection with it? Until we get official details and an actual timeline for a GW3 release, we are literally worrying about our house burning down sometime in the future with no more information that "it could possibly happen for real." It's illogical to make current choices or even let it destroy our present happiness based on such an irrational fear.

No. Look at it like this. If you are already enjoying GW2 to where it feels like mere work and you've lost motivation due to a future potential, you already don't enjoy GW2 enough to continue for the theoretical 5+ years it would take for a GW3 release; you'd have already quit, so it'd make no difference and the "sunk cost" doesn't apply. However, if you enjoy GW2 now, it'd be only be diminishing your own enjoyment in the present by a potential (not guaranteed) future. Imagine if you lived your life like this outside of GW2 as well. It's stupid, you'd never live at all. Also, legendaries have no inherent value. So the idea that it will be "worthless" is silly. They are already "worthless," and it is only you who deems them valuable for some arbitrary reason. It's but a mere challenge for yourself to invest time and dedication for a payoff of accomplishment/dopamine. It benefits no one, neither in real society or the a virtual one in GW2. Legendaries have always been a waste of time unless you enjoy it by overcoming the grind/struggle for "something to do." They are not an investment. If you feel so guilty about the time you spend in GW2, maybe you should evaluate if you have an addiction problem--because deep down you feel you should probably be spending that time elsewhere (most likely irl).

Ughh... I'm not going to keep going back and forth on this, because your arguments are either wrong, or just conjecture/opinion. Only reason people afk in pvp is because pvp is not fun? That's your opinon. Many people think doing the same meta over and over 30+ times as not fun. It's obvious people afk metas and convergences, just open your eyes. People have afked GW2 metas since octovine. Funny, the the exact same thing could be said about pvp. You get more pips for ranking in matches, winning, etc. So, again, a moot (and not the fun norn kind) point. Regarding raids. You are right, paying for raid clears are a participation trophy. This is hardly "all" legendary armor, just like some people also work for their obsidian armor, especially commanders leading metas, etc. Personally I know no one that has bought raid clears, but admittingly there must be plenty for people to still be advertising it. HOWEVER, my point was that you don't need to even pay for a carry with obsidian armor because you can just poke the meta boss or whatever and have people carry you for free. And if it's about buying leggy armor progress, you can literally buy kryptis essense off the TP with Unstable Kryptis Essense Coffers and Unstable Kryptis Motivations. These are extremely popular because now the motivations are around 8g a pop and I sell the one I get from my weekly converge reward every week! Raids may list clears in lfg by raid sellers, but hundreds of convergence sellers, including myself, list their clears directly on the TP. The only difference is, with obsidian armor, Anet decided to bake in convergence clears as part of the system instead of relying on community curated "services " which is great because it's extra profit for the majority of people playing the content, rather than a select few. To say that obsidian armor is harder than sPvP, WvW, or for heavensake raids is just ignorant. But, I'm done arguing. There is no point in arguing this with you to convince you (or others) otherwise. It's obvious to me that you have not engaged with other legendary armor crafting paths nor have you thought about the obsidian armor path enough to see that it is just as exploitable, if not more (in comparison to raid armor), through afk and buying methods as the other armors. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

Haha Anet must really hate NCsoft at the moment. What a disaster. But, GW3 or no, everyone just needs to chill. We know nothing about this so called GW3. Games under development don't always go to market. Anet has always been cooking stuff in the back, GW3 or otherwise. Those saying you don't want to play GW2 anymore because of GW3 and that GW2 is now a waste of time, need to reevaluate what games really are. In short, if your having fun playing GW2 now, play GW2 now. Even if. GW3 is on the horizon, it's likely years away. If you think maxing out your GW2 account is like slogging through a PhD thesis and has any inherent value besides your own enjoyment, you should have quit long ago.

Is it? I mean, you can essentially afk every SotO meta and just tag the boss at the end. Do this 30 times in each map, and done. Sure, that's maybe 1% more effort than clicking the ready up button in pvp, but less work than being a yakslapper to farm pips in WvW or what have you. You can do similar things in convergences as well. Again, the only thing that requires consistent interaction is map completion and lanterns, but this has zero chance of failure and is nearly second-monitor content. Not saying people should actually do this (and obviously it wouldn't actually work if everyone afked a meta, lol). It sounds pretty unfun. But, so does afking in PvP and slapping yaks every 10 minutes in the borderlands. I think it's very comparable. Go ahead and enlighten me on how it is not though. The only armor that requires any actual effort is raid armor since you need to understand your role, have a semi-solid team, and you can also fail all day at Vale Guardian, never getting a single LI. That's why there are raid sellers in the lfg and in none of the other lfg tabs for game modes that offer other leggy armors. Every other leggy armor set can essentially be boiled down to a "participation trophy." Of course, it doesn't have to be. It'd be great if all people got sPvP armor because they love sPvP, or WvW because they love WvW, or raid armor because they love raiding, or open world armor because they love metas and convergences. and actively engage with the content.. but we all know that's not the reality. What is this "everything" I am ignoring? The armor takes a bunch of account bound currencies by engaging in specific content and a airship full of trophy materials, just like every other leggy armor. Only thing really different is the amount of ectos you need (which I explained the insignificance for above). I'm crafting an obsidian armor set right now, and honestly, it doesn't seem much more expensive now if I just avoid the over inflated materials on the TP due to the current armor rush. Definitely seems cheaper than a gen 2 leggy weapon. And anyway, I specifically said, "it's 'free' in terms of effort." I'm not saying it costs zero gold or whatever (which I also mentioned). But, I am curious by what you mean when I'm ignoring everything, because I am working on a set now. Anyway, this is getting super ranty, and it's not meant to be. I'm 100% fine with obsidian armor. I'm getting a set myself (love that medium). I just find it very comparable to any other non-raid leggy armor.

To be fair...so can obsidian armor. Well, minus the map completions. By the time you collect all the SotO curriencies, you'll almost have all your ectos from the salvaging rares that drop (or basically any pve in game). gw2efficiency even shows the price is comparable to the other armors, and successive sets are actually CHEAPER since you don't need to complete the Astral Ward and Oneiros sets. So, I'd agree that obsidian armor is "free" in terms of effort. Of course there's a gold sink, but you can basically work on it passively if you're patient. A general note about "devaluing" of legendaries. The truth is, gearing as become a lot easier the past few years with the introduction of accessible stat selectable exotics and Vault ascended gear. That also technically devalues legendary gear, but honestly, I'd rather more people just play content and not have the "gear grind" the main prohibiting factor. As someone that has done raid leggy armor, I don't really care. Skins are different for all legendary armor sets, so people know the work that went into each one. In the end, I like that the utility has become more accessible to more players, even if it may merely require more persistence than skill to acquire it.

Did someone say single attribute armor? No? I'll take toughness please. Yes, just toughness. We can call it Pacifist.

The answer is magic. Soo-Won is the "mother" or rather progenitor of the Elder Dragons. They were born of her through the use of magic. Glint (Glaust) is the "daughter" or rather scion of Kralkatorrik. All elder dragons can produce eggs. Their father (or mother in the case of Glint) is magic.

Changes and balance are good. However, I do kind of wish that any time you log into a profession that had skill/trait changes for the first time after there was an update, you'd get a little popup that says something like "Your profession's abilities have been altered, please confirm your build." or something. I have definitely been caught off guard when I don't know there's been a balance patch.

As someone who has crafted a set of raid leggy armor and working on a set of open world armor, honestly, it isn't that bad considering the amount of skill/effort needed. You can basically get it in 4 months with a couple hours a week doing convergences and some metas here and there. Content is hot right now, so it takes zero time and hassle to organize anything as well, so basically it's a "participation" reward. Both convergences and metas give gold and unidentified gear for both luck and ectos that you can use to craft. I know there are a handful of amazing crazy people that have already crafted their obsidian armor set(s). But, this truly is just a leggy set that you can play whatever (outside of SotO currencies) and accumulate the generic materials over time. Just take it slow. You get ectos, luck, T6 mats, etc. from doing basically anything in game. As with all legendary crafting, it's a marathon, not a sprint.